


The Wild Woman's Daughter

by sweetNsimple



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Acceptance, Coming Out, Family, Groundhog Being an Asshole, Hurt/Comfort, Jack has been hiding, Jack is loved, M/M, MTF Jack Frost, New Years, Other characters are vaguely written, Pitch is Better, Sanderson is drunk, Self-Esteem Issues, This story is not in depth about Pitch's and Sanderson's relationship, Trans Character, Trans Jack Frost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I tell myself it’s short for Jacklyn,” Jack tells her.  “I don’t mind it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wild Woman's Daughter

She has many names: _La Majer Grande_ , the Great Woman; _Luz del abismo_ , the Light From the Abyss; _La Loba_ , the Wolf Woman; _La Huesera_ , the Bone Woman; _Rozsomák_ , the Wolverine; _Na’ashjé’ii Asdzáá_ , The Spider Woman; _Humana del Niebla_ , the Mist Being; _Amaterasu Omikami_ , the Numina who brings all light and consciousness; _Dakini_ , the dancing force…  The Wild Woman, who has no name and many names.  The Wild Woman, who embodies feminine passion and power, who lives within all women – _all women_ – and she is fierce in a wolfish way, as women are like wolves, as women are wolves, as she _is_ a wolf.  The Wild Woman, who is a storyteller and a protector, a mother and a sister, a lover and a warrior, merciless and merciful, naked and uncontrollable, howling at the full moon as she dances across the leaves and twigs littering the forest floor, as she dances across the desert sands, as she dances through the mighty jungles of South America, as she skips and jumps from mountain to mountain and across oceans and seas…

Jack has been calling her Diana for the past five years because that is the name she most currently fancies.  She loves how the syllables roll off her tongue – _Di-an-a_ – and the tongues of her lovers, her children, her companions, and her daughters – what she calls the women of earth.  She loves to hear Jack say her name. 

Jack is actually surprised that she still uses that name.  It has changed several times before in a matter of weeks, if not days.  Diana travels the world in many forms to help her daughters and has no singular attachment to any name as every culture and continent knows her by a different calling. 

“It’s _Diana_ , you damn, dirty hog.” 

Jack doesn’t mind, though, that Diana has seemed to momentarily settle… unlike certain other spirits.

The portly, anthropomorphic groundhog with his golden eyepiece and pale blue vest that barely covers his rotund belly, on the other end, either has not been exposed to Diana often enough or has no self-preservation skills because Terrence G. Hogsworth mostly just wants to reminisce about the one night he and “the Wild Woman” were on the wild side together.

Diana has told Jack on more than one occasion that, while she finds it very easy to forgive herself most poor bed partners as long as they satisfy her, the groundhog has been among her greatest regrets. 

Hogsworth is making a concentrated effort to slide his paw across Diana’s bare leg while appearing to be soothing her when Jack finally meandered down from the rafters. 

The thing is, for spirits and guardians, demi-gods and demons, New Years is a three day long celebration starting with Samoa and Christmas Island and not ending until everyone finally managed to drag their sorry carcass out of North’s mountainside abode the day after the last New Years.  Father Time, or Ombric Shalazar as the Guardians have – apparently, from what Jack has been told – known him for centuries, is doing rounds through North’s workshop, wielding Baby New Years like a priceless relic of history nearly forgotten.  From what North has explained to Jack, Baby New Years is actually Father Time’s grandchild in a loose sense of the term as Baby New Years has no biological parents.  Jack isn’t surprised.  Whenever Jack looks at Baby New Years, the infant somehow never looks like an infant so much as bright, happy, and hopeful colors with the vague impression of space cut out in an infant shape.  It is only when Jack peers in a different direction that the baby appears to be a gurgling, brown-skinned human, clear in Jack’s mind as if Jack had never looked away.

Everyone comes to see Baby New Years.  _Everyone_.  The only spirits and others missing are those who don’t have the brain cells, the time, or the moral compass to come to the celebration. 

Hogsworth should have been one of them – for the obvious reason of having no brain cells – but, alas, here he is.  And, alas, there Jack goes, hoping to maybe avoid some bloodshed if only because the yetis North employ definitely do not want to scrub blood out of the floorboards twice in one day. 

Jack can already see that Diana’s teeth are bared, sharper than any human’s teeth should be.  She always half resembles the wolves she runs with; while she is, overall, a curvaceous dark-skinned woman, she stands on one foot and one canine hind leg, her one liquid brown eye and one predatory gold eye focused on Hogworth as if she plans to swallow him whole like the wolf from _The Three Little Pigs_ must have done.

“My dear,” the Groundhog is saying, tutting as if Diana is being irrational – which will only have the effect of raising Diana’s hackles higher as injustice to her sensibilities, self-control, and intellectuality never fails to set her red hot temper aflame – “What a name, ‘Diana’ – a momentary fancy of yours, one name among hundreds, a pretty word in which for others to address you when you wish to create distance between – ah – them and you.  We – that is, I feel – that we have no need for such distance as we have not needed it in the past – if you do so remember?”  Perhaps the Groundhog thought that his smile was seductive or his manner suave, but it is all too clear by looking at Diana that he is only making himself more appetizing for her to devour in a way not sexual or pleasurable – for either of them, really – at all. 

That is when Jack swoops in.  “Hey, Diana!  What’s goin’ on here?  Is he giving you any trouble?”  Jack waits for Diana to make eye contact and smile before leaning on her, head cradled in the junction of her shoulder and neck. 

“He is,” Diana agrees.  “I was going to eat him to make him go away.”

“You’d have to crap him out later,” Jack reasons.  “And he looks greasy.  Your body’s a temple, are you sure you want to do that?”

Diana considers this new point of view consisting of the consequences of her actions.  “I’ve eaten fat bears and enjoyed fast food through my many daughters.  I’ll be fine.”  And she opens her mouth wide – so wide that her cheeks rip open and reveal sharp, white teeth as far back as her ears.

The Groundhog disappears so fast that he leaves claw marks on Diana’s thigh. 

Jack laughs at the desolate, hungry whine that emits from Diana’s throat as her mouth closes, leaving no mark behind of her impossibly long jaw.  “I was going to enjoy him one last time.”

“You wouldn’t enjoy him on the way out,” Jack says.

Diana huffs.  “I wouldn’t know, I haven’t eaten him yet.”

“You’re not _going_ to eat him.”

Diana is revealingly silent, her smile too wide and sharp for her face.

“My, what big teeth you have,” Jack snarks. 

“The better to rip apart the patriarchy, my dear,” she snarks back.  And then she has Jack’s hand in hers as she leads them away from the main party where Sandy has decided, in his mostly drunken state, that he is a lamp and has created a lampshade for himself to wear as a hat.  His partner and significant other – none other than Pitch (possessed for eons by Nightmare Men and Fearlings, he now has, in light of their battle in 2012, regained his own sense of morality at the least, allowing him to instill within children a healthy amount of fear of things they _should_ be afraid of as well as helping them to overcome their fear of what they should _not_ be afraid of) – and Pitch’s daughter, Emily Jane, or Mother Nature as she is better known, are opposite of each other: as Pitch attempts to tell Sandy that, no, he is not in fact a lamp, please stop making “Turn me on” innuendos, Emily Jane is flicking Sand’s lightswitch on and off while disregarding Tooth’s horrified expression as the tooth fairy flutters around them. 

“Come with me tonight,” Diana growls, her free hand dragging through Jack’s hair, combing it with her nails.  “Dance with me,” she says, because dancing with her is like dancing with the wolves and Jack has danced with her for nearly a century and half now on every New Years night.

Jack does not immediately recall why going with her tonight might be a bad idea.

Jack is smiling, ready to follow Diana to the wilderness, to the deepest cave, the highest mountain, or anywhere, really, when a paw lands heavily on Jack’s shoulder and stops their progress.

“He won’t be ‘dancin’’ with you this year,” comes a gruff voice from over Jack’s head, another paw coming up and batting Diana’s hand away from Jack’s hair.  “He’s with _me_ now.”

Diana glares first at Bunny, who is indeed the spirit at Jack’s back, and then frowns at Jack.  Jack cannot look her in the eye.

“Bunny,” Jack starts to say, wanting to tell him that it isn’t like that, that dancing is _actually_ dancing, that it’s okay, that Bunny can let Jack go and trust that Jack will not betray him…  “Diana –”, but Jack does not get to say that she does not need to rip Bunny apart before it is far too late.

Bunny chins Jack.  “Find someone else to quench your appetite.  I don’t want to see you comin’ on to mah mate again.” he snaps at Diana, who has begun to look murderous.

“Find someone else?” She snarls.  “ _Someone else_?  You overgrown ball of fur, you miniscule _snack_ , you damned, dirty, hypermasculine _rodent_ – she is _my_ daughter, as she is the moon’s daughter and Mother Nature’s and if you _dare_ misgender her again or threaten to take her from me, I will rip you to shreds with my claws, swallow your heart, and shit out your liver to use as fertilizer for your garden and that will be the last kind thing I will ever do for you, _do you understand me_?”

While fights at the New Years celebration are normal – it’s impossible to have so many personalities in one place and not have them – and most everyone has grown accustomed to ignoring one or a few arguments, it is this particular barrage of threats that draws the attention of Mother Nature, Pitch, and the rest of the Guardians.  North had been laughing raucously as Sandy had pinched Pitch’s bottom and then immediately continued his lamp camouflage.  Now they are all quiet.

Pitch himself is looking very closely at Jack and Jack knows exactly why.

It has been years since Jack was last so afraid.

“Oh,” Diana says, and her features which were becoming more wolfish with every harsh word begin to smooth away.  “They didn’t know.”

Jack swallows thickly.  “They didn’t know.”

“ _Me_ misgender him!?” Bunny explodes.  “Ah’ll have you know that Jack is _male_ an’ if you have trouble figurin’ that out, then you’re in the wrong business!  He doesn’t even _look_ like a girl.”

Jack flinches and Diana instantly rallies herself up for war.  “Not every woman is born a woman, you inconsiderate _jackass_.  I don’t care if her dick is a foot long or if she looked like a lumberjack – in her heart, she is a woman and that makes her my _daughter_.” 

“Well, Jack’s never said anythin’ to _me_ about bein’ a girl!”

When would she have had the chance?  She knows the answer to that is within the past eight months while they have been together, cautiously navigating romance, intimacy, and bickering.  And yet, it had felt as if there was never a right time.  Being Jack Frost, she had gotten accustomed to being misgendered mostly in stories and songs as Jack Frost was popularly believed to be male except for in some stories where he’s depicted as a queenly figure with a frozen heart.  Maybe ten times a year or even less had he ever run into another spirit who had talked to Jack using “He, His,” or “Him”.  Ever since joining the Guardians, though, it’s almost everyday, but she can handle it.

She can, really.

She handled it when she was still human and had hidden her secret behind religion and play, terrified of being ostracized, abandoned, raped, murdered, or exiled. 

But she feels Bunny’s paws on her shoulders, his chest expanding against her back, and she imagines that she can feel his heart hammering behind his ribs. 

What they have, she wants it to last.  And it can’t last if Jack begins to dread Bunny’s mouth opening, his hands touching her in places she has no real attachment too, though she does not strongly dislike them either.  Jack looks at Bunny’s face and she wants to always care for him as deeply as she does now, maybe even more so in the future – she does not want to twist and taint what they have with her fear.

Jack only trembles a little bit as she finally says, “Bunny?”

Bunny pauses.  “Yeah, love?”

“… I’m a girl.”

This isn’t the fight that has transfixed an entire palace of spirits and others – it has attracted the curiosity of the few closest.  But it has also attracted the Guardians and they and Bunny, when Jack tilts her head up to see his reaction, all look shocked and hurt.

“I don’t look it on the outside,” Jack says, trying to sound confident, trying to smile, “but I’m a girl.  I don’t want to wear dresses or have long hair, and I don’t want to wear makeup or bows, but I knew I was a girl long before I even knew who I was.  Having a… you know.”  She twirls a finger in the general direction of her crotch.  “It doesn’t bother me too much, but I really want breasts and I’d be pretty happy if I had the other parts that went with being a woman.”

“Oh, Jack,” Tooth whispers as if she’s in pain.  Then, with more confusion, “Jack?”, like she isn’t sure if that is her name anymore.

“I tell myself it’s short for Jacklyn,” Jack tells her.  “I don’t mind it.”

Pitch appears proud of her, his golden significant other tucked in the curl of his arm with his daughter also giving Jack a supportive look.  They are the only ones of the circle of guardians who have come to surround Jack who seem to have any clue of what is happening right now.  And it _is_ a circle now, albeit a loose one, for some semblance of privacy that is ultimately failing as whispers and stares begin to spread out from their center.  North looks like a brick wall with an expression of shock painted on his face, ready for a strong wind to knock him over.  Tooth hovers next to him, one hand to her mouth and the other in the middle of reaching out or pulling back – Jack isn’t sure.  Bunny is a solid mass behind her, his paws still holding her close, and she is a little terrified that he’s going to push her away at any moment even though a larger part of herself knows that he won’t.

It only takes a little doubt, though, to make her search Bunny’s eyes almost desperately while he stares down at her.

“If none of you have anything else to say,” Diana growls, “I’ll be taking my daughter.”

“No, you won’t.”  Bunny curls one arm around Jack’s waist and tugs her even closer, his head coming over her shoulder so that he can gnash his teeth at Diana.  “He – _she_ – is my mate, and _she_ comes with me.”

“She dances with me on New Years!”

“Not this year!”

“Why am I arguing with you?” Diana snaps.  “It’s _her_ choice!  You have no say over what she does when it does not concern you.”

“It concerns me!”

“You know she means ‘dancing’ as in _dancing_ , right?” Jack asks, but she’s more flabbergasted than anything right now. 

Is that it?

Really?

_Really_?

But that does seem to be all anyone wants to say on the subject as North moves in and claps Bunny on the shoulder.

“Come, old friend, Jacklyn and Wild Woman – ”

“ _Diana_.”

“will dance to celebrate New Year and we will dance to celebrate New Year!”

“I’ll break yer nose first.”

“HAH!” North grins.  “Funny.”

“Can I come dance with you?” Tooth asks, landing daintily on the ground by Diana.  “Unless it’s just something between you and – ”

Diana has already pulled Tooth into her arms and is pressing a motherly kiss to Tooth’s forehead, her nails carefully grooming Tooth’s colorful feathers.  “You are a woman, therefore, you are my daughter, and all of my daughters are welcome to dance with me.”

Her eyes, so gentle on Tooth, turn razor-sharp on Bunny.  “Hop off, Rabbit.”

“Not on your nelly, mutt.”  North is pulling insistently at Bunny’s one wrist while Bunny holds onto Jack like she’s the only thing saving him now.  

Jack can only stand there, continuing to be confused by how everyone is dispersing – not in disgust, but because it’s a party and Jack being a girl was just a momentary update before everyone could return to what they were doing.

She isn’t sure if she’s offended, ecstatic, ready to laugh, ready to cry, or ready to bash Bunny’s head against a wall for having her terrified these long months only to be so, so – _accepting_.

“Dancin’ is _just_ dancin’, eh?” Bunny asks her, almost desperate for clarification.

Jack realizes that she’s smiling and then that she’s crying when Bunny shrugs North off so that he can wipe away her tears.

“Yeah,” she croaks, “Dancing’s just dancing.”

“Naked,” Diana has to add, smiling ferociously.  “In the moonlight to the song of the wind and the earth and the sky.”

Bunny’s paw spasms on Jack’s shoulder.  “ _Love_ – ”

“We’ll dance,” Jack promises, taking Bunny’s paw in hers.  “After I’m done dancing with Diana and Tooth, I’ll find you and we’ll dance.”  She tugs on Bunny’s ear so that she can whisper into it, “and we’ll do the other kind of dancing later tonight.”

Bunny’s eyes grow very dark as the air punches out of his lungs. “Ah, right.  Right.”  He finally begins to pull away, but not without nuzzling Jack’s cheek.  “I’m leadin’, North!”

“HAH!  Funny.”

Diana again takes Jack’s arm and Tooth takes the other, women who are sisters by virtue of being women.

“We’ll have to talk about this more later,” Tooth says, and Jack is almost dizzy with relief because, for one wild moment, it had seemed as if she had not said anything at all and she, Diana, Mother Nature, and Pitch had been the only ones to know yet again because of everyone’s lack of reaction.  “We don’t want to do anything to upset you or make you think that we don’t accept you as you are.  Do you prefer Jack or Jacklyn?  You said you don’t like to wear dresses, but what about skirts or heels or, or – ”

“I like the clothes on my back,” Jack tells her, laughing, kind of crying.  “They’re comfortable.”

Tooth nods.  “Okay, but what about – ”

“I’m okay with the way I look,” Jack says.  “The only hard part about it is that everyone always thinks I’m a boy.  I mean, I get why, but…”

Tooth stares into her soul, it feels like, for minutes while Diana leads them toward the sunroom.  Jack is the only one of them capable of dealing with the arctic cold for long. 

“Can I call you beautiful?”

Jack feels her cheeks frost.  “I mean, it’d be a lie – I’m just ‘handsome’.”

“Well,” Tooth replies,” I think _that’s_ a lie.  You’re obviously very beautiful.”

“I’ve been telling her that for decades,” Diana huffs.”

“We’ll tell you that for centuries until you believe it,” Tooth promises.  “All of us.  Bunny especially.”

And, that night, in bed, after Bunny has rediscovered Jack and what she likes to hear in bed, if not reestablishing what he already knew about what she liked to feel, Bunny does tell her how beautiful she is, again and again and again, in kisses and words and embraces.

Jack thinks that she might one day believe him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by 'Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype' by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. (c) 1992. I have not written in quite some time, so I apologize for the shabby work. Don't feel afraid to point out my mistakes if you find any.
> 
> Happy Holidays!


End file.
